President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is trying to thwart a reparations program in Evanston, Illinois, that was set up to provide recompense to Black residents affected by racist policies.
Officials in Trump’s government apparently think it’s perfectly fine for federally prosecuted perpetrators of a fundamentally racist coup attempt to qualify for payouts via an “anti-weaponization” fund that one GOP representative referred to as “reparations.” Meanwhile, the DOJ moved on Tuesday to intervene in an ongoing federal lawsuit against Evanston’s first-in-the-nation reparations program, arguing that compensating Black victims of racism is illegal.
“Under the pretext of paying reparations for events more than 100 years ago, the City of Evanston has chosen to distribute millions of dollars in cash and housing benefits to people because of the color of their skin or the color of the skin of their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump loyalist who has used the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division as a weapon to attack civil rights, said in a press release on Tuesday.
Contrary to Dhillon’s claim, no one is slated to receive money simply because they or their ancestors are Black, or because of events that occurred 100 years ago. The reparations program is currently constituted authorized funds collected via a cannabis tax to support a program authorizing housing grants for Black residents and descendants of people targeted by racist housing policies in Evanston. And sure, while those policies may have started a century ago in some cases, their effects are still lingering today. The program’s premise is not to pay people because of their skin color, but because they can show how they have suffered an injury as a result of those policies. (This guide on Evanston’s reparations program and the racist policies that prompted them provides some useful background.)